Cranking it up

The National Academy of Sciences has decided to recognize a “paper of the year” published in its Proceedings. Surprisingly, the first paper to be anointed in this way is by a student. Even more surprising, it’s a mathematical paper. Why should these facts surprise me? Not because I think student mathematicians are unlikely to do work of distinction. On the contrary. But even though the National Academy is not quite the old-fogey’s club it once was, papers authored solely by students are not all that common in PNAS. And mathematical papers make up a tiny fraction of the journal’s content, which is dominated by work in the life sciences.